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List: koffice-devel
Subject: [MA ODF Accessibility Team] Report from a11y meeting 29 Nov
From: Gary Cramblitt <garycramblitt () comcast ! net>
Date: 2005-12-06 23:43:02
Message-ID: 200512061843.04358.garycramblitt () comcast ! net
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Mark Bucciarelli and I attended a meeting 29 Nov in Boston, Massachusetts. \
The meeting was sponsored by the Disabilities Law Center (DLC), \
Massachusetts Office on Disability (MOD), and the Disability Policy \
Consortium. The following description is mostly mine with input from Mark. \
It is taken from memory and the few notes we made. Nothing in this report \
should be taken as fact, completely accurate, or official policy. It is \
our interpretation of what was said. Where Mark and I differ in \
interpretation or viewpoint, I've so indicated. It was not a large meeting. \
About 30 people I'd say. Some of the people present had no idea what Gnome \
or KDE are. The title of the meeting was "What is Open Source?", but from \
what Mark and I could tell, the real purpose of the meeting was: 1. To \
smooth the ruffled feathers of the disabled community in Massachusetts and \
give them a chance to be the focus. 2. To inform the various groups in MA \
that represent users with disabilities as to what the MA Open Document \
Format (ODF) decision means. 3. To describe the current state of \
accessibility (a11y) in applications, desktops, and operating systems that \
support ODF and PDF. 4. To describe the process that will be used to \
implement the decision with respect to a11y. 5. Identify the issues that \
need to be solved in order to fully support users with disabilities in MA \
using ODF and PDF. The formal speakers were:
Peter Korn of Sun.
Aaron Leventhal of IBM.
Peter Quinn, CIO of MA Information Technology Division (ITD).
Greg Pisocky of Adobe Systems.
John Chappel of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC).
Leon Shiman of Shiman Associates, member of the X.org Board of Directors. \
Leon is our main contact and the reason we were able to attend. I (Gary) \
also spoke *very* briefly, representing KDE e.V. We haven't seen a full \
attendees list, but some names we did get were: Christine ("Chris") \
Griffin, Disabilities Law Center (convened the meeting) Bill Allan, Head of \
Disability Policy Consortium, not a state organization, rather a \
lobby/advocate for the disabled. 25% of his board requires accessibility \
technology to use computers. Bill has spoken out against the ODF decision. \
Jerry Berrier, President of the Bay State Council for the Blind. He has \
spoken out against the ODF decision before. Alan Yates, Product Manager at \
Microsoft. Myra Berloff, Massachusetts Office of Disabilities (MOD), ADA \
Coordinator for the State (Americans with Disabilities Act--big Federal \
Law). She is working on Memorandum of Understanding between the various MA \
agencies as to how a11y will be addressed. Barbara Lyberger, an attorney \
for the Massachusetts Office on Disability. Paul Snayd, IBM.
Cynthai Ice, IBM.
I won't report everything that was covered in detail (I couldn't do that \
even if I wanted to). Peter Korn recorded audio of the meeting and once he \
has received an OK from everyone who spoke, intends to put it on the web. \
At the very least, he intends to publish his part of the meeting, and by \
far, he had the longest part. Let me try to summarize what was covered \
briefly. 1. Peter Korn gave two talks. The first talk was about standards \
in general, open standards, how open standards relate to open source (most \
people confuse the two), and how all these relate to accessibility, \
accessibility standards, and ODF. 2. Peter Korn gave a second talk on Open \
Source Accessibility & Open Office Accessibility. Peter described how the \
Microsoft Active Accessibility API (MSAA) has stifled progress in a11y on \
the Windows platform. For instance, the MSAA is not a robust enough API \
for assistive screen readers to get at the contents of documents. It also \
doesn't permit scripting of applications via the API. Most of the \
"success" in Microsoft Office has been through the "heroic" efforts of AT \
vendors such as Freedom Scientific (makers of JAWS) and Ai Squared (makers \
of ZoomText) who have had to reverse engineer the MS Office applications in \
order to achieve the admittedly excellent support they have. He pointed \
out this is limited to MS Office applications, not the entire Windows \
desktop. He pointed out that these implementations often require \
specialized hardware drivers that don't support all hardware. He pointed \
out that the AT vendors are going to have to do this all over again with MS \
Office 12, that upgrades will be expensive for the MA government and for \
users, and that significant retraining will be needed. He described this \
as the "bolt-on" approach. Then he described the a11y infrastructure \
approach, where a11y is built into the system from the ground up. (Though \
he didn't say it, he's talking about AT-SPI.) He described how such a \
robust infrastructure benefits all applications running on the system, and \
provides opportunities to enhance a11y that simply are not possible with \
the bolt-on approach. Peter then gave a demonstration under Gnome of \
Gnopernicus screen reader, Gnome On-screen Keyboard (GOK), and Dasher. \
Peter mentioned that a scripting screen reader named Orca will be out in \
beta sometime in April or May. 3. Aaron Leventhal described the current \
state of a11y in Mozilla and Firefox. Firefox 1.5, which was released the \
same day, has significant a11y enhancements. There are many technical \
issues to deal with however. In particular, how should browsers deal with \
pages when part of the page has dynamically changed (timed javascript and \
flash for example)? Firefox has incorporated accessibility in their project \
by having a team that reviews all commits to ensure they comply with \
accessibility issues. This is now a project policy. Not a lot of rules \
but they stick to them. (Could KDE develop similar rules and script them?) \
4. Peter Quinn directly addressed the disabled community. \
Some points:
- categorically will move the date if the chosen ODF product(s) cannot give \
at least the current level of a11y functionality.
- is very reticent to change the date because there is a lot of industry \
attention and focus now (IBM + Sun together) and it is wise to keep the \
pressure up.
- spoke about the Microsoft application to ECMA to have their XML schema \
ratified as an open standard: 9 - 18 months, then they have to go through \
international standards body. Basically a no-go if he can stick to the \
1/2007 date. 5. Greg Pisocky described the PDF/A standard and the \
enhancements for a11y in both Adobe Writer and Reader. He gave a \
demonstration of OpenOffice.org running under JAWS (which currently works \
but with lots of fixable problems), had oo.org write out a PDF/A file and \
speak it in Reader. Since Adobe Reader has its own TTS capability, the \
point of this demonstration was that ODF supports a11y and since oo.org \
exports to PDF, it can create highly accessible documents (at least as far \
as PDF goes). The PDF "TouchUp ReadOrder Tool" looked really nice. Issues \
it dealt with:
- Logical Read Order (for example, in a doc with two columns, don't \
read across from one column to the other, like Jaws does \
now in OOo).
- Alt text for graphics
- Logical tab order (for forms)
- Short field descriptions (for forms)
- Tags on figures and tables
Mark felt Greg's demonstration was very impressive. His was the only demo \
that showed JAWS and Mark was impressed with its capabilities. It was \
amazing to watch and see how a blind person must interact with a computer. \
As someone who had not seen that before, Mark appreciated that he could use \
it and showed how it worked. I thought it was less so because it showed \
the current problems between oo.org and JAWS (airing dirty laundry). 6. I \
was only allowed to speak for about 2 minutes, in which I stated that Mark \
and I were volunteer developers representing the e.V., that KDE is \
committed to accessibility and desires to cooperate with accessibility \
groups and users in MA and elsewhere to improve a11y in KDE and KOffice, \
that KDE is an alternative graphical desktop, that KDE includes a suite of \
office applications called KOffice, that the suite includes word processor, \
spreadsheet, presentation, project planning, database and graphical \
applications, that KOffice reads and writes ODF, that KDE and Gnome are \
cooperating and not competing, that KDE 4 will share the very same a11y \
infrastructure as Gnome, and that this means the AT tools in Gnome will \
work with KDE apps and vice versa. 7. John Chappel spoke briefly about the \
CRM's plans. The CRM, together with the MOD, are preparing a set of a11y \
software standards. The standards will be published on the web with a \
public comment period. The CRM and MOD are also looking at what a11y \
training requirements will be needed as a result of the ODF decision.
Some important points that were raised in questions and discussion:
1. ODF software not only needs good user documentation and training, but \
that documentation and training itself must be accessible. Something to \
keep in mind is that most of the trainers are themselves disabled. 2. MA \
doesn't have a good sense of exactly what a11y functionality is currently \
being used within the MA government and therefore would be a priority when \
migrating to new software. There are certain features, for instance, that \
are available in JAWS and ZoomText, but are these features actually being \
used? A survey to collect that information is underway. 3. Should Adobe \
Writer, oo.org, and KOffice "nag" document authors to put a11y information \
in the document? From an a11y standpoint, yes, they must. From a \
usability standpoint, such a feature would just be turned off and ignored \
by most users, even if were the default. At the very least, the capability \
should be in the software, and it should be possible for admins to force it \
on. 4. Disabled government employees are concerned that a) they are going \
to need extensive training in using the new software (one blind person \
stated that he required 6 months of training with MS Office and JAWS), b) \
if a variety of software is used within the MA government, their ability to \
move jobs from one agency to another would be impaired, c) since most \
disabled people in MA use Windows, their ability to get a MA government job \
will similarly be impaired, d) the current state of a11y in ODF software is \
horrible and just won't do, and e) promises are being made to fix this, but \
they don't have confidence those promises will be fulfilled. 5. Because of \
#4, not only should MA have a standard document format, but it should have \
a standard application user interface as well, so that users with \
disabilities who are forced to change applications do not have to learn a \
completely new interface. 6. A blind person's desktop will be the same as \
a sighted persons. No reduced capability.
The following are my (Gary's) personal observations and thoughts.
Peter Korn did a fantastic job at explaining how the bolt-on approach \
impedes a11y progress (and is expensive), and that the AT-SPI approach \
offers many opportunities to not only meet the current level of a11y under \
Windows, but to exceed it. He barely mentioned KDE or KOffice, but I still \
thought the talk was an excellent one. If you can listen to his \
presentation (I'll post a link when he puts it up), I urge you to listen. \
Despite his efforts, the message just didn't seem to get through to the \
people with disabilities in the room. They kept saying (not in these words \
exactly, but in essence), "we don't want to have to change". They are \
happy with what they have and view the ITD decision as a) forcing them to \
accept a level of a11y that is much less than what they currently have, and \
b) raising huge roadblocks to job mobility and availability for disabled \
persons. Despite Peter and others mentioning several times that Office 12 \
will force change on them whether they like it or not, they keep saying \
"don't make us change." We need to keep hammering home the message that \
they are going to have to accept change and that non-choice is coming from \
Microsoft. We also need to address the training issue in a big way. IMHO, \
the demonstrations were very impressive and should have "sold" the users \
with disabilities on the possibilities for the future that AT-SPI creates. \
Alas, that didn't seem to happen. Mark thought Peter's talks were too \
technical, too long, pushed UNIX too much, and not appropriate for the \
audience. Given the questions that followed, Mark may be correct. I was \
also disturbed by #4, #5 and #6 above. In essence, this is the pro- \
"software monoculture" argument. If everybody in the world uses the same \
software and it never changes, then users with disabilities are much better \
off. It was particularly distressing to me to hear these comments coming \
from the MOD and MRC people, who will be writing the software a11y \
standards. When pressed, most backed down somewhat to restrict the \
requirement to "all ODF software should have common functionality and a \
common keyboard interface, i.e., the same shortcuts across all ODF \
applications." This "requirement" could have a profound impact on whether \
KDE and KOffice are ever used in MA. Think about the frame-based interface \
in KWord for instance and how this differs from the style-based interface \
in oowriter. If the software monoculture requirement wins the day, in \
essense it means KDE must *be* Windows. argh! OTOH, we must not dismiss \
the very real and valid concerns about job mobility for disabled users. I \
think we can address this in two ways. 1. MA and the open source community \
(us) need to develop a robust strategy for a11y training. We should \
develop an "accessibility kit" that agencies, governments, schools, \
universities, etc can easily obtain to help them implement training. \
Obviously, a11y training cannot be fully automated, but we can provide most \
of the electronic materials that would be needed. 2. We need to keep \
hammering home the message that a) software keeps changing, particularly \
when only one vendor is controlling it, and b) the a11y infrastructure \
approach offers opportunities to extend functionality beyond what is \
currently implemented, and therefore, offers positive change, not negative \
change. In addition, Peter Korn pointed out that if MA develops a11y \
training in a variety of applications and platforms, it will open up job \
opportunities to people with disabilities that they might not otherwise \
have had. Jobs in UNIX system administration and website/services \
creation, for instance. IMHO, this "software monoculture" argument could be \
the greatest obstacle to adoption of ODF and open source software in MA, \
second only to the dirty politics.
In a separate private conversation, Leon asked us for the following \
information. He needs specific information, not generalizations. I'd like \
whoever can supply the information, in as detailed and comprehensive manner \
as you can manage, to send it to Leon (leon at magic dot shiman dot com). \
He needs this info by 25 Dec 2005. 1. What capabilities are needed in \
X.org in order to implement a11y in KDE? (I know almost nothing about \
X.org, but I think this means composite and transparency?) What specific \
problems exist and are they fixable by Jan 2007? Leon is on the board of \
X.org, so he can help to make things happen. 2. What platforms does \
KOffice run under? Sun/Solaris? BSD? All Linux distros? If not, which \
ones? 3. What are the issues and problems with D-BUS that need to be \
solved before KDE and AT-SPI can migrate to it? He has heard that D-BUS is \
"not ready for primetime" and would like to know details. 4. What are the \
current issues and limitations of the Gnome ATK and AT-SPI with respect to \
KDE that would have to be solved? In addition, Leon wants to perform \
usability testing of KOffice. He wants us to supply him with the "best" \
version of KOffice we can manage to put together and also provide someone \
who can "hand hold" while they do the testing. That person would not have \
to be physically present, but they must be reachable by phone or email and \
knowledgeable. He wants to do this testing very soon (around end of year). \
This is also an opportunity for KOffice to get some valuable and detailed \
testing results. He also wants to perform accessibility testing of KOffice. \
I'm trying to talk him out of this one, since I've already written a \
detailed accessibility report myself.
-- Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)KDE MA ODF Accessibility Team \
Chairman_______________________________________________koffice-devel \
mailing listkoffice-devel@kde.orghttps://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice-devel
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